Loneliness In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Lonely is a word that describes ones feeling of being isolated and alone. Loneliness is one of the most prominent and reoccurring major themes in the book Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck. The whole story is taken place in a town that means ‘solitude’ in Spanish. All of the characters show parts of their loneliness throughout the story but Candy’s loneliness because of ageism and his disabilities, Curley’s wife because of sexism and Crooks because of racism are the ones who are shown the most in the book. They have no choice but to live through this as they are not the ones who brought the loneliness onto themselves. The other characters in the book are cruel and are oblivious to what their words can do. Candy is one of the many characters

He is the oldest and the only disabled man on the ranch. Those two facts already prove his differences and isolates him from the rest of the hands at the barn. Though, his loneliness increases from the start to the finish. At first, he has his dog to rely on. The dog got adopted by Candy when it was a puppy, so after all these years, he’s gotten attached to him. He went everywhere with dog so he became oblivious to certain things. The other people on the ranch and the people who slept in the bunkhouse with Candy were not. They noticed that the dog had picked up a smell, almost like it was rotting from the inside out. The dog was very old and became very useless. It had become blind and was no longer able to run around and be like the other sheep dogs. One of the men, Carlson, became sick of having to smell the animal so he brought up an idea to Candy. Carlson was convincing Candy to let him shoot his dog. Candy didn’t want his dog to die because in a way,

The author really pushes the idea of sexism in the story to make the readers understand what it was like for women in that time period. It doesn’t help that she was surrounded by men all the time. The fact that the author doesn’t give her a name, John only named her by Curley’s wife, shows that she was not important to any of the other men. She is portrayed as an object instead of an actual person. He shows that she really doesn’t belong in a place like a barn. Women in that time period were supposed to live and stay in their homes all day, live as housewives. To stay with the children and prepare dinner as the husband works. In this case, Curley’s wife is always alone because Curley is either bucking barley or is out in the town. Yet, Curley forbids her to talk to any of the other men on the ranch. So already, she is quite lonely. Adding to that, the other men don’t even want to talk to her. They think that she is jail bait. That they will end up in jail because of her. The men don’t say nice things about her either. They say that she always has a ‘wandering eye’, meaning that she’s always flirting with them. Candy has also called her a tart. She tries talking to them to escape her loneliness but no one wants to talk to her. The only reason she lives at the barn is because she wanted to leave her mother. The only way to do that was if she married someone, so she